


Restraint is a Way of Dance, and Dance is a Way of Life

by Des98



Series: The Dance of Rosa's Past, Present, and Future [1]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Different Perspective, Gen, May become a longer story, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-11 00:31:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12923457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Des98/pseuds/Des98
Summary: Rosa has a past.  Dance is more important to that past than she lets on.





	Restraint is a Way of Dance, and Dance is a Way of Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JessicaAuburn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessicaAuburn/gifts).



> So I'm working on a new story. I think I have more I wanna do with this (it will be Dianetti, obviously). But for now, please enjoy this. I am gifting it to my best friend, because I love her and she is always always there for me and reads my stuff when I'm not sure if I wanna post it. Here's lookin' at you, kid.

Rosa was a dancer- the whole squad knew, of course, because there were no secrets in a precinct as close as theirs- but no one had seen her dance, minus Terry, who had watched her run through a short movement for Ms. Miriam that day in the briefing room. But even that little taste of her private life that Terry had been so privileged to witness barely scratched the surface of her passion, the raw beauty and strength that she poured into her dance. The squad didn’t know much about her life, and she liked it that way. They did, however, labor under the impression that she had a normal family and childhood, and she did everything she could to further cultivate that notion. She did not want anyone to know that she was adopted, that she’d watched her Argentinian parents killed in front of her eyes for being political dissidents when she was six and spent the next nine years in a ‘re-education facility’ where they tried to beat the rebel out of her. She’d escaped when she was fourteen, snuck onto the hold of a cargo plane, and never looked back.  
Well, she’d like to say she’d never looked back, but the truth was, something like that really messes you up. When the Diazes adopted her, she thought that it would be more of a symbiotic arrangement- she had the promise of regular meals and a roof over her head, and they got another kid to help them around the house and stuff. But the Diazes weren’t like that- they wanted their new daughter to be truly a part of the family. They let her keep her knives and all the weaponry that helped her feel more secure in her unfamiliar environment, but they also insisted on taking her to therapy. There wasn’t a therapist around who could deal with her, so they tried activities that kept her busy and let her work through her aggression. She started with martial arts (and she was obviously very good at it, if you’d ever spent any time watching her during a chase). Her sensei had noticed that there was an elegance and passion behind her movements, and had told her parents that she would make a natural ballet dancer. They’d signed her up for that as well, and Rosa fought them at first, she absolutely did not want to wear tutus and pink leotards and pointe shoes, but as soon as she took to the barre during her first lesson, she was in love. She didn’t say as much, didn’t even thank her new parents, but when she asked to take gymnastics as well and increased her lessons to three times a week, they knew they had done right by her, and they were pleased.   
When she was offered a scholarship at the American Academy of Ballet when she was sixteen (an impressive feat, since she had only been taking lessons for two years at that point), she was actually reluctant to bring it up with her parents, since it was a Diaz tradition to attend the Catholic High School she and her sisters were going to. But they supported her. Rosa knew that they loved her more than she loved them, but the fact that she loved them at all was enough for them- it was progress. Of all the girls at the academy, she had the least experience, but she was one of the best. Ms. Miriam saw that, and she pushed her harder than any of the other girls. Ms. Miriam insulted her, berated her, and although Rosa later told Terry that it had made her miserable, the truth is that she had thrived in it. Her parents, mindful of her past, had always been gentle with her. If she broke curfew, they only gently chided her. They were unrelenting when it came to certain things (like ballet lessons), they never raised their voices or actually punished her. Ms. Miriam did- if there was even the slightest problem with her routines, she was working extra hours at it in the ballroom, alone at night, with her old hag of a teacher treating her terribly, but in a way, that made her feel empowered in that she didn’t treat Rosa as if she was fragile or would break. Ms. Miriam spent more time on her than any of the other students, even though she’d made it clear she had no intention of pursuing it as a career, whereas every other girl was practically falling over themselves to enthuse about their dreams of making it big.   
She’d told Terry she didn’t like the woman so that he’d feel better about the advice he was trying to give her, because she did care for everyone on her squad and showed it in her own way. But Ms. Miriam came to know more about her and her past than anyone else, even (or perhaps especially) her parents. When the other kids made fun of her accent or the fact that she spoke textbook-perfect formal English without any of the relaxed colloquial banter the others exchanged all the time outside of classes, Ms. Miriam reminded her that she was the only one that could speak French outside of ballet terms. Rosa had a knack for language; she’d only learned English when she was fourteen and came to America, but she learned it in formal classes. Ms. Miriam taught her French, and when they conversed it was always in the perfect, traditional French of the style that Rosa still spoke in. Ms. Miriam didn’t care that Rosa rarely used contractions or that her vocabulary for even the most informal of quotidian conversations came straight out of the Oxford Dictionary of English (a habit that she only trained herself out of in the academy, when perfect grammar and meticulous articulation didn’t fit the terrifying, unapproachable image that she was trying to cultivate).  
Ms. Miriam was the first person who’d ever seen her cry that had lived to tell the tale (she had never cried in the camp, not after the first month, and the ones who’d killed her parents had died of unknown and untraceable causes the night she escaped). Ms. Miriam was brusque and harsh and any praise she gave was in the form of backhanded compliments. When Rosa cried that first time in years, in one of her overtime exercises that Ms. Miriam had given her when she wobbled slightly in her third minute of dancing en pointe, Ms. Miriam had listened, stone-faced, as she opened up about her past and how the other dancers made fun of her in class and in the ballroom and in the dorms and in the halls and everywhere else, and about how hard it was to hold it all together sometimes. Her teacher had responded by telling her that it was stupid of Rosa to expect herself to hold everything together all the time. She told her that the reason she pushed her so hard was that Rosa Diaz was the only one in the class who had any goddamn backbone (that was the first and only time Ms. Miriam had ever cursed in front of Rosa), and that she wanted to cultivate that. When Rosa was expelled for punching a classmate in the face and then flipping her over her shoulder and onto the floor after said classmate directed one too many racial slurs her way (it was a ballet mat, she didn’t want to actually cause any real damage; that black eye was nothing) Ms. Miriam had advocated for mere detention. Unfortunately, the girl’s father was a sponsor of the school, and Rosa was expelled. Fortunately, she was already the best dancer in the class, and Ms. Miriam helped her study and earn her GED by the time she was 19, six months earlier than the rest of the class graduated (due to the intensive ballet instruction, students took slightly longer to earn their diplomas, as academic instruction was scaled back and spread out over a longer period of time). Whereas Rosa went on to join the police academy when she was twenty, her tormentor never made it in the dance industry (Miss Priss’s father may have held financial sway over the academy, but Ms. Miriam had connections in the dance world).   
When Ms. Miriam called her a lazy ox and insulted her posture that day in the precinct and Terry watched in horror as his plans backfired, the two dancers exchanged a look and a shy smile, and Rosa knew Ms. Miriam was proud of everything her favorite student had accomplished.


End file.
